Nurses Courtney Lucht, Eric Tronnes and Juli Uzlik testifed about the need to have a foundation of standards because hospitals are not providing even the minimum staff they promise. Tronnes described fruitless meetings with hospital management in Staffing Advisory Committees because “productivity invariably trumps safe nursing care.”

Next step for the bill is likely to be the House committee on Health Policy.

“Nurse staffing can literally be a life-or-death issue and affects families from Detroit to the Upper Peninsula,” said Switalski. Scott Nesbit is a registered nurse from Muskegon. He says he and other nurses have experienced mistakes or a “very near miss” caused by short-staffing.

HEALTH CARE

Hospitals Crack Down on Tirades by Angry Docs The 2011 incident illuminates a long-festering problem that many hospitals have been reluctant to address: disruptive and often angry behavior by doctors. Experts estimate that 3 to 5 percent of physicians engage in such behavior, berating nurses who call them in the middle of the night about a patient, flinging scalpels at trainees who aren’t moving fast enough, demeaning co-workers they consider incompetent or cutting off patients who ask a lot of questions.

LABOR UPDATES

All Work and No Pay: The Great Speed UpThe Dow hit a record high on Tuesday, but who’s winning? The conditions of America’s jobless recovery detailed in this essay nearly two years ago have only continued—corporate earnings have risen at an annualized rate of 20 percent since the end of 2008, according to the New York Times, while Americans’ disposable income has inched ahead 1.4 percent by comparison.